But perhaps what I didn't anticipate was the mysterious power of nostalgia.
As I roam the city of Stockholm (larger than expected to be honest), tired out by the warm sun, I wandered into a bicycle tunnel beneath a hill in Ostermalm. This is no normal bicycle track of course. Given the predilection for Stockholm adorning its public spaces, this tunnel is equipped with a resonating railing. At a certain pitch the tunnel would sing (or eerily a wail really). For the uninitiated, it'd be a scary experience, as if ghosts are wailing for their release from the walls.
This wail, however, seem to amplify a particular note from a melody played in the tunnel.
The wail was a high pitched one, but the melody came from some stuttering, low pitched strumming, as if the player was learning his notes. Two notes were played and stopped, with one of it hitting the resonating frequency and sending the tunnel into a glow of a wail. He tries again, another wail.
I stared back.
Not out of annoyance, but that the strum was one that I was familiar with.
Yes, the ghost of my past did appear. Not Haunters or Gastly of past, but of a musical instrument that followed me for years. And which a copy of it now permanently stuck onto the back of my phone.
Yes, it did sound like a Liu Qin (柳琴), just at a lower pitch.
I did not linger, but turned back and stared, twice. Melodies of the past now stuck in my head, repeating the oh so familiar songs I've played in the days of yore.
So I returned the next day.
There was that old man who was busking with his mandolin, with a music stand in front of him. Busking is probably an overstatement, its sounded more like an old man trying to learn the mandolin while earning some money from kind strangers. Out of pity, perhaps.
I did the same, but turned back and spoke with him. Even in halting English we were kindred spirits, sharing the same love for a lesser musical instrument family. There was a wonderment as he looked at a picture of the Liu Qin, a surprise that there is another instrument out there that sounds like it. And indeed unexpectedly the rarely used pick I've always held in my wallet finally had its value, an object of discussion.
We parted ways. But perhaps I should have played something, to share bit more of the life that I once had. And stories that he would have.
***
The past. Indeed my past is filled with music. Unintended or not, those days of time consuming practice did not go to waste. It is there, always there. Just like the past. It will never fade. It will always, always be there.
Like the ghosts of the past, it sometimes does glow out of the depths of a resonating tunnel, and the soul.
